Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to contact centers and particularly to a method and system for determining occupancy of one or more agents in a multimodal contact center.
Description of Related Art
Contact centers are employed by many enterprises to service inbound and outbound contacts from customers. A typical contact center includes a switch and/or server to receive and route incoming packet-switched and/or circuit-switched contacts and one or more resources, such as human agents and automated resources (e.g., Interactive Voice Response (IVR) units), to service the incoming contacts (i.e., customers). Contact centers distribute contacts, whether inbound or outbound, for providing service to any suitable resource according to predefined criteria. In many existing systems, the criteria for serving the contact from the moment the contact center becomes aware of the contact until the contact is connected to an agent are client or operator-specifiable (i.e., programmable by the operator of the contact center), via a capability called vectoring. Normally in present-day Automatic Call Distributors (or ACDs) when the ACD system's controller detects an agent has become available to handle a contact, the controller identifies all predefined contact-handling queues for the agent, usually in some order of priority and delivers to the agent the highest-priority, oldest contact that matches the agent's highest-priority queue.
The primary objective of contact center management is to ultimately maximize contact center performance and profitability. That may involve minimizing cost, maximizing contact throughput, and/or maximizing revenue. Further, ongoing challenges in contact center administration involve optimizing contact center efficiency and keeping the customers satisfied from the service offered by the contact center.
Currently, contact center occupancy is measured by the percentage of time an agent is working within a given interval. In traditional contact centers, the only media capability an agent is using is voice via telephone calls. Occupancy often refers to information such as talk time and after call work time as periods that constitute work time. An agent's occupancy is a measure of how efficiently an agent's time is used. If an agent today were to work constantly from login to logout, the agent would be 100% occupied. The general rule of thumb within the call center industry is to aim for an agent to be 80-85% occupied so as not to overwork the agent.
Calculating the occupancy of an agent who is dealing with a plurality of simultaneous multimodal contacts is difficult. Call centers today do not need to be limited to just contacts via a voice capability. Instead, various media capabilities may be used in a contact center system. However, even though a customer may communicate with an agent using various media capabilities, there is currently no way to determine the occupancy of that agent who can handle multimodal contacts at one time. For example, at the present time, there is no way to determine the occupancy of a person who is dealing simultaneously with voice, chat, email and/or any other form of customer interaction.
Present solutions only determine occupancy of an agent using a voice capability. As an agent cannot handle multiple simultaneous voice calls, an agent with a contact having a voice capability is currently 100% occupied and an agent who is not on a voice call, and not doing after call work, is 0% occupied. This “all or nothing” approach to occupancy leads to a very inefficient multimodal system as an agent can handle multiple contacts with, for example, web or email media capabilities, at a time. Handling simultaneous media capabilities is possible and is often necessary for an agent to be occupied. For example, an agent would not be 100% busy working on a contact that has an email capability. However, there was formerly no known way to determine occupancy in a multimodal scenario, such as the occupancy of a call center agent who is both responding to an email and simultaneously answering live chat questions. Similarly, for example, an agent answering a text message can easily have more than one open message at the same time as a customer may spend time writing a message and the agent may be waiting for a response from the customer. As such, there is a need to determine an agent's occupancy in a multimodal contact center.
There are many advantages to a multimodal contact center. By allowing an agent to participate in simultaneous multimodal contacts, a customer's wait time to communicate with an agent may be decreased. Contact centers wish to provide service to as many requests as possible in a given amount of time and a multimodal contact center may allow more requests to be serviced and minimize the wait time for their customers. Accordingly, there is a need to determine the occupancy of an agent who has simultaneous contacts in a multimodal environment.
Furthermore, in addition to only considering contacts with a voice capability, such as a telephone call, the current occupancy calculation up to now does not consider any other demands on an agent that are distinct to the contact. For example, current occupancy scores for an agent do not take into account whether a particular contact was easy or difficult for the agent. For example, if the contact is a customer complaint, the agent has a much more difficult phone call then if the call is a sales-related question. Demands on agents may be considered in the occupancy of an agent in order to reduce agent burnout.
In addition to current demands on an agent, simultaneous contacts with different media capabilities may bring new demands on agents. For example, it may take the agent time to switch from one media capability to another media capability. Furthermore, some media capabilities may be more difficult for an agent than other media capabilities. For example, responding to a customer via an email may be easier for an agent than responding to customer via a phone conversation. As such, the occupancy of an agent must take into account the varying demands placed on the agent responding to simultaneous contacts in a multimodal contact center.
Aspects of the agent's work that are uniquely demanding depending on the media capability of the contact handled by the agent and the multiplicity of demands placed on an agent are not currently taken into account when determining the occupancy of the agent. By ensuring the new demands on an agent handling the various media capabilities within a contact center are considered, agent burnout can be decreased and staff turnover can be reduced. It is with respect to these and other considerations that improvements have been needed.
Based on the aforementioned shortcomings of the background art, a system and method are needed to determine the occupancy of agents in a multimodal call center and in turn further improve agent utilization and customer satisfaction. Thus, the contact center should be able to implement methods for enhancing overall multimodal performance of the contact center.